Welcome to Games That Weren't, a site dedicated to unreleased/incomplete/cancelled games and prototypes on both consoles and computers. As well as news, reviews and features, we have platform specific projects with downloads, photos, scans, screenshots, videos, reviews and interviews. Our main platforms consist of the C64 and Amiga, where there is a full digital archive of games being preserved for both machines.

Please note - we are a non-profit digitization project, aiming to digitally preserve history of unreleased software which would otherwise be lost for good. If for any reason there is anything that you do not wish to be on the website, please contact us for removal.

Latest news

Many thanks to you all for your support and contributions over the years. Thanks to you, we have reached a milestone today with our 2000th GTW64 entry into the archive. To celebrate we are proud to present the full game – Yogi Bear – The Big Clean Up by Hi-Tec Software.

This has been carefully reconstructed from source, with a lot of code developed from scratch to be able to bring you a complete and playable game, thanks to Martin Pugh. The special development also features new loading screen and end screen artwork by Steven Day, and a specially composed ending tune by Joachim Wijnhoven. Full story and download can be found below:

Alternative Software games – postponed!

In case you didn’t see the preview news post, we were hoping to bring you two exclusive and complete unreleased Alternative Software games to download and play, as an extra bonus.

Unfortunately, there are some remaining issues that need ironing out before we can make them available. We will continue to discuss releasing them onto the site, and will hopefully see them made available in 2017.

Also – 11 new entries added

As well as the above, we have added the following new entries, which led up to the 2000th entry.

Games That Weren’t has been running for almost 20 years now, with its first on-line presence appearing way back in early 1999. After years of research and preservation work done in our spare time, we are now about to mark to our 2000th archive entry. To celebrate the milestone, we have a special full game for you which will launch for our Christmas update coming soon. No, it is not ‘Murder’ before you ask!

UPDATE FOR BELOW (20-12-16) – The Alternative games will not be included as part of the Christmas update, and will hopefully be added to the archive in the new year. There are one or two final details that need ironing out before we can proceed with permission. Apologies for this, but we will have some new games for you to check out still. Update looking good still for before Christmas! 🙂

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That is not all, but recently we have preserved a number of disks which contained two full Alternative Software games that didn’t quite make it, due to the dwindling 8-bit market. The disks were heavily decayed (a familiar story these days), and the data was only just recovered. No doubt, if it had been any longer – both games could have been lost forever.

Alternative Software are still going very strong today, and have recently celebrated 31 years in the industry – a remarkable achievement. It only feels like yesterday when I used to regularly purchase their C64 games from my local sweet shop and Boots. Their most recent release is Rugby Union Team Manager 2017, and you can also check out their other titles via the link above.

We contacted Roger Hulley at Alternative Software, and he has very kindly given permission for us to add both games to the digital archive. So we will be pleased to be adding both mystery games as part of our Christmas update and as part of our milestone celebration. Both games are (c) 2016 Alternative Software.

Barring any hiccups, we should hopefully launch our update just before Christmas. So watch this space!

A rather different early preview of Bugs Bunny – Private Detective has been found on Ash and Dave’s work disks recently. This was done around 1991 time, and seems to have undergone some major changes that led up to the 1992/93 full game that we saw some years ago.

The map is very different, with different graphics, and the digging element of the game is gone – where you must climb up walls to get around. No doubt changes were made due to elements not working or Warner not being happy. It’s a great curiosity worth checking out here along with the full game:

Thanks to Paul Clansey, we have fully preserved two of his unfinished games in the form of RPG game Freebooter and ambitious Elite style sim Exodus. Hoping for Paul to share more soon about how they both work, but check them out in the meantime here:

This summary of yet another lost Amiga conversion comes from contributor, Termie Gen, who talks about the unreleased Gryzor and Contra conversions for the Amiga.

CONTRA:

Developed between 1987 and 1988, but never released it seems. Screenshots of an Amiga version found their way onto various print material, including the box art of other home computer versions of the game, shown below.

The September and October 1988 issues of Amiga World magazine make multiple mentions of Contra. They even provide 2 price points for the game, as part of a list of Amiga software that are available through phone or mail order.

Like the DOS and Commodore 64 versions of the game, a putative Amiga Contra would not be developed by Konami themselves, but another company. It could have been handled by a European developer, such as Ocean Software, given the Commodore 64 Contra is simply a North America regional release of Gryzor, also handled by Ocean. This is less likely, however. Interesting side note: Contra for DOS would in turn be released in Europe by Ocean, re-dubbed as Gryzor. Talk about a real mix-up with their conversions.

The fact that a smaller developer house, and not Konami, had likely worked on Amiga Contra means that getting a lead on this title will be much more daunting of a task. Judging by the screenshots, this looks to have been the definitive home computer conversion, graphically at least. It is one that definitely needs to be brought closure. Out of all the home computers that Contra was converted for, the Amiga could have handled Contra the best.

GRYZOR:

Less concrete information is available for this title than Contra. Most of the references to it are in magazines that advertise or cover the versions of the game from Ocean. It’s possible that this would have been the same case as the DOS version, where the North-American developed Contra was simply renamed to Gryzor when localized to Europe.

The following advertisement is present in many computer magazines, such as ACE and Amstrad Action:

Although focused on Ocean Software’s Gryzor releases, it also mentions that the title is available for PC and Amiga. The latter 2 are even interestingly grouped together and separated from the CPC, Spectrum and Commodore 64 releases.

In their article reviewing the DOS and Commodore 64 versions, German magazine Power Play lists Gryzor as being also available for Amiga (as well as Amstrad CPC and Spectrum):

A less credible reference is/was on a few websites, where they claimed that there is a Gryzor game for Amiga that was developed by Ocean Software and published by Sega. A game such as Gryzor for the Amiga computer would not go unnoticed if Ocean Software was indeed the developer.

An Amiga version of Gryzor could have fared pretty well compared to the other 4 available ones. Perhaps more information about this game may be unearthed if its counterpart, Contra, is recovered first.

Here are some additional scans thanks to Ross Sillifant – suggesting that Gryzor was not going to be outsourced.